On this page: Ladon – Laedus – Laelia – Laelia Gens

LADON (Aa8«i>). 1. A river god of Arcadia, is described as a son of Oceanus and Thetys, and as the husband of Stymplialis, by whom he became "the father of Daphne and Metope. (Hes. Theog. 344 ; Schol. ad Find. 01. vi. 143; Diod. iv. 72 ; Pans. viii. 20. § 1, x. 7, in fin.)

2. The dragon, who was believed to.guard the apples of the Hesperides. He is said to have been able to assume various tones of voice, and to have been the offspring of Typhon and Echidna ; but he is also called a son of Ge, or of Phorcys and Ceto. He had been appointed to watch in the gardens of the Hesperides by Juno, and never slept; but he was slain by Heracles ; and the image of the fight was placed by Zeus among the stars. (Hes. Theog. 333 ; Apollon. Rhod. iv. 1396 ; Serv. ad Aen. iv. 484; Hygin. Poet. Astr. ii. 6.) [L. S.] . LAECA, PO'RCIUS. 1. P., was tribune of the plebsB. c. 199, and by his veto prevented ManliusAcidinus on his return from Spain from entering the city in an ovation, which had been granted him by the senate. [acidinus, No. L] Laeca was appointed in b. c. 196 one of the triumviri epulones, who were first created in that year (see Diet, of Ant. s. v. Epulones} ; and in the following year, b. c. 195. he was one of the praetors, and was sta­ tioned with an army in the district of Pisae in Etruria, that he might co-operate with the consul ValeriusFlaccus, who was carrying on war in Northern Italy against the Gauls and Ligurians. (Liv. xxxii. 7, xxxiii. 42, 43.) The name of Laeca occurs on coins of the Porcia gens, of which a specimen is given below. On the obverse is the head of Pallas, with the legend p. laeca, romaand x: the reverse represents three figures, the centre one is a man clad in the paludamentum, laying his right hand on the head of a citizen wearing a toga, and behind him stands a lictor ; beneath these figures there is on most coins the legend provoco, which, however, is wanting in the one figured below. This evidently refers to the lex Porcia de Provocatione (Liv. x. 9; Cic. de Rep. ii. 31, pro Rabir. 3, 4) ; and as the name of P. Laeca occurs on the coin, it is supposed that the law may have been proposed by the above-men­ tioned P. Laeca in his tribunate in b. c. 199. There is nothing improbable in this supposition ; but the name of the proposer of the law is not mentioned by any ancient writer. (Eckhel, vol. v. p. 286 ; Pighius, Ann. Rom. vol. ii. p. 255, &c.)

LAELIA GENS.

either fromArtemis or Minos, and afterwards left it to her husband Cephalus. When the Teuraes-sian fox was sent as a punishment to the Thebans, to which they had to sacrifice a boy every month, and when Creon had requested Amphitryon .to deliver the city of the monster fox, Cephalus sent out the dog Laelaps against the fox. The dog over­took the fox, but Zeus changed both animals into a stone, which W!is shown in the neighbourhood of Thebes. (Apollod. ii. 4. § 6 ; Hygin. Fab. 189, Poet. Astr. ii. 35 ; Ov. Met. vii. 771.) [L. S.]

LAELIA. 1. The elder of the two daughters of C. Laelius, surnamed the wise. She was married to Q. Mucius Scaevola, the augur, by whom she had two daughters, Mucia major and minor. Laelia was celebrated for the purity with which sl>e spoke her native language, and she transmitted her conversational excellence to two generations—to her daughters the Muciae, and to her grandaughters the two Liciniae. Her son-in-law, L. LiciniusCrassus [CRASSUS,'No. 23], whose eloquence pro­fited by her instructions, describes Laelia's con­versation as a perfect model of the antique tone of Naevius and Plautus ; and Cicero, in whose early manhood she was still surviving, represents her diction as possessing a certain indefinable Ro­man grace and propriety, of which highly educated women were the best depositaries, and which con­veyed a correct and lively image of the eloquence of her father Laelius and his illustrious friend, the second Africanus. The conversation of Laelia gave the tone to the polished society of her age, and was distinguished from that of Cornelia, the mirror of a later generation, by its native Latinisni, and by its sincerity and earnestness, which qualities were in some degree sacrificed afterwards to exotic graces, and to a composite idiom borrowed from the schools and sophists of Athens. (Cic. Brut. 58. §111, deOr. iii. 12. §44.)

2. The younger of the two daughters of C. Laelius the wise, married C. FanniusStrabo. (Cic. Brut. 26. § 101.) [W. B.D.]

LAELIA GENS, plebeian, appears in the Fasti for the first time in b.c. 190. Its only regular cognomen is Balbus[balbus], though Laelius who was the friend of the younger Scipid Africanus was sometimes surnamed Sapiens.

The following stemma exhibits the extinction of one branch of the Laelii in the male line after the fourth generation, and the marriages and descendants of the female line: —

2. M., a senator and a leading member of the Catilinarian conspiracy. It was at his house that the conspirators met in November, b. c. 63. (Sail. Cat. 17, 37 ; Cic. in Cat. i. 4, ii. 16, pro Sull. 2, 18 ; Flor. iv. 1. § 3.)

LAEDUS, silver-chaser. [leostratides.] LAELAPS (AcuAcuJ/), i. e. the storm-wind, which is personified in the legend of the dog of Procris which bore this name. Procris had re­ceived this extremely swift animal as a present,